Cancel Those Air Tickets: The Prado is Coming to Houston!

MFAH director Gary Tinterow’s old Metropolitan Museum of Art connections, and the deep pockets of his new institution are paying off for the Prado: yesterday the NY Times announced that the MFAH it would be the only US venue for the upcoming “Portrait of Spain: Masterpieces From the Prado,” show, a travelling showcase for 100 or so of the Prado’s well, masterpieces, that rarely leave the country. The MFAH will pay the famed Spanish museum an undisclosed fee, but with an endowment around $1 billion, the MFAH is the US’s third richest museum (albeit a distant third), after the Getty and the Met itself. Tinterow curated “Manet/Velázquez: The French Taste for Spanish Painting,” for the Met in 2003.

The Times goes on to mention that the MFAH has hired the husband-and-wife team of David Bomford and Zahira Véliz, Bomford as director of conservation, Veliz as senior paintings conservator, following the retirement of longtime conservators Wynne Phelan and Andrea del Bagno.